Saturday, October 26, 2013

SOME THOUGHTS WHEN CONSIDERING 2014 AND 2016…


I have heard from many in the state-controlled media, and until I want to puke, what a great governor Chris Christie is, and how if I, as a Republican, want to have any hope of beating Hitlery Clinton, who will most assuredly be the Democrat candidate, then Christie is going to have to be my guy. Now keep in mind here this is the very same state-controlled media who successfully sold everyone on John ‘The Maverick’ McCain and, to a lesser degree, Mitt Romney. So I’m hear to tell you that Christie is not the guy we need to have representing us and or values next time around, and he, by his own actions, has made that abundantly clear.

Besides his, apparent, new found support for gay marriage, according to recent data from the Tax Foundation, it would appear that ‘The Rotund One’ from New Jersey has much more in common with his fellow Democrat governors than those of his own party. You see, apparently, 7 of the 10 worst states in terms of business tax climate are run by Democrats while seven of the 10 best business tax climate states are headed by Republicans. And one those states resting quite comfortably in the bottom ten is none other than New Jersey, headed up by Republican Chris Christie. And this guy, the only who can beat Hitlery, has New Jersey sitting in 49th place.

It would appear that the ‘only’ guy who’s doing an even worse job, oddly enough is also a guy that we’re being told is also has political aspirations for 2016, none other than Democrat Andrew Cuomo. Mr. Cuomo, it would seem, has done such a magnificent job that he now has New York coming in dead last, in 50th place. That’s quite an accomplishment for a guy who wants to be president. Come on folks, wake up and smell the coffee! Does anyone really think that either one of these boobs is in any way capable of running the country? Especially after what is likely to be left of it by the time Barry "Almighty" gets finished with it? We gotta think about this.

So according to the Tax Foundation, here are the 10 states with the best business tax climate are:
1. Wyoming, Governor. Matt Mead (R)
2. South Dakota, Governor Dennis Daugaard (R)
3. Nevada, Governor Brian Sandoval (R)
4. Alaska, Governor Sean Parnell (R)
5. Florida, Governor Rick Scott (R)
6. Washington, Governor Jay Inslee (D)
7. Montana, Governor Steve Bullock (D)
8. New Hampshire, Governor Maggie Hassan (D)
9. Utah, Governor Gary Herbert (R)
10. Indiana, Governor Mike Pence (R)

And now here are the 10 states with the worst business tax climate:
41. Maryland, Governor Martin O’Malley (D)
42. Connecticut, Governor Dannel Malloy (D)
43. Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker (R)
44. North Carolina, Governor Pat McCrory (R)
45. Vermont, Governor Peter Shumlin (D)
46. Rhode Island, Governor Lincoln Chafee (D)
47. Minnesota, Governor Mark Dayton (D)
48. California, Governor Jerry Brown (D)
49. New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie (R)
50. New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo (D)

A little backround here. In order to come up with the above standings, the Tax Foundation’s 2014 State Business Tax Climate Index calculated by "comparing the states on over 100 different variables in the five important areas of taxation (major business taxes, individual income taxes, sales taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, and property taxes) and then adding the results up to a final, overall ranking." "This approach rewards states on particularly strong aspects of their tax systems (or penalizing them on particularly weak aspects) while also measuring the general competitiveness of their overall tax systems," says the Tax Foundaiton.

"The result is a score that can be compared to other states’ scores." For the top ten ranked states, "the absence of a major tax is a dominant factor in vaulting many of these ten states to the top of the rankings. Property taxes and unemployment insurance taxes are levied in every state, but there are several states that do without one or more of the major taxes: the corporate tax, the individual income tax, or the sales tax," according to the study. But as we all know, there are very few, if any, taxes that Democrats, and apparently some Republicans, can bring themselves to go without. We need to keep such things in mind when choosing our next president.

Adversely, the bottom ten states suffer from "complex, non-neutral taxes with comparatively high rates," according to the study. Seven of the worst 10 states are run by Democrat governors. These states will be less likely to attract businesses and entrepreneurs because of their poor tax system. However, "[s]tates with the best tax systems will be the most competitive in attracting new business and most effective at generating economic and employment growth," the report states. Now I’m about as far away from being and economic genius as you can get, but can this not make sense to just about anyone. This is what you do to attract businesses!

Some economist, a fella by the name of Charles Tiebout, is said to have stated decades ago that "if citizens were faced with an array of communities that offered different types of levels for public goods and services at different costs or tax levels, then all citizens would choose the community that best satisfied their particular demands, revealing their preferences by "voting with their feet." This is clearly happening today, as many people have fled New York and California for far more tax-friendly business climates such as Texas and Florida. But even after having lost chunks of their populations, high taxing states stick to their high taxing policies.

So look, we Americans, Republicans and Democrats, must make the next presidential election more about our priorities and less about the priorities and political agendas of others. And our priority must be to create the type of government that we can, again, be proud of, and one that will ensure that our children are able to live in peace and are able prosper, limited only by their own initiative and drive to succeed. And we need to be realistic about which policies will enhance those things and which ones only serve to do harm, and which ones provide the best chances of improving our economic future, and which ones only stifle economic growth.

Look around you, you are surrounded by 50 individual, and in some cases very unique, miniature laboratories. And with even a cursory glance, it becomes very obvious, very quickly, which examples we would do well to emulate in Washington, and which ones we should avoid at all costs. Our country is sinking, my friends, and if I may be so bold, I think it fair to say that it is being ‘made’ to sink. And our opportunities to reverse course are dwindling at an accelerating rate. The election of 2014 will be our next chance to begin what will be a very long and painful turn back toward fiscal sanity, in 2016 we can turn further back in the right direction. Will we?

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